Territoriality and Me!-Me!-Me!-metics

From: jorn@MCS.COM (Jorn Barger)
Newsgroups: alt.memetics
Subject: Territoriality and Me!-Me!-Me!-metics { ;^/
Date: 17 Sep 1994 13:28:20 -0500
Has everybody else been noticing a phenomenon you might call "peacock
PhDs", who strut around like little Napoleons... and end up publishing
boring memoirs with their glossy mugs plastered across the covers?
Or that "not invented here" syndrome, where an academic tyrant refuses
to acknowledge that anyone but him can have a good idea?
Or scientists who falsify their research, and get away with it by
viciously attacking anybody who disagrees with them?
Is this recognized as *memetic* territoriality???
These guys are advocating certain sets of memes, as part of a whole
*syndrome* of extending their territorial control. (Chimpanzee
academic-politics! ;^) One concrete measure of this territory might be
journal-pages-filled, or how-often-cited-by-others. Another might
be grant-money collected.
But what this means is that *scientific* memetic battles, which should
be being decided based on ***how strong their science is***, must be
getting overshadowed all the time, by battles between strong
personalities... with the most *obnoxious* ones tending to prevail!
Kuhn reassures us, though, that after a generation their influence
will fade to nothing...
(Is this discussed anywhere? It seems totally obvious in a way, and
terribly subversive in another...)
jorn

From: arkuat@netcom.com (Eric Watt Forste)
Date: Fri, 23 Sep 1994 04:28:35 GMT
This is why we need powerful hypertext systems like Xanadu, so that we can
not only follow backlinks to the supporting research, but follow *forward*
links to commentary on the piece that we're looking at.
To steal from one of the recent issues of EXTROPY magazine, say you're
looking at Jeremy Rifkin's latest works, and you notice a footnote on one
of Rifkin's references to the Fourth Law of Thermodynamics. It's not a
footnote that Rifkin wrote... it's a reference to that particular passage
of Rifkin, made in someone *else*'s writing. You follow that forward link
and find out that the author of it is poking fun at Rifkin since nowhere
in the history of science is there any mention of a "fourth law of
thermodynamics".
I think a lot of bogus research and bogus writing would be put out of
business fast if we had this kind of publishing infrastructure in place.
Time to speed up memetic evolution another notch.
--
Eric Watt Forste || finger arkuat@c2.org || http://www.c2.org/~arkuat

Date: Wed, 28 Sep 1994 20:02:25 GMT
>This is why we need powerful hypertext systems like Xanadu, so that we can
>not only follow backlinks to the supporting research, but follow *forward*
>links to commentary on the piece that we're looking at.
>
>I think a lot of bogus research and bogus writing would be put out of
>business fast if we had this kind of publishing infrastructure in place.
Is "Me!Me!" a meme? Isn't it more like an anti-meme, an individual attempt
to escape the memes of established science?
Possibly "Me!Me!" has a memetic base in egoism/capitalism/individualism/
narcissism. That would make it a meta-meme.
I will not defend bogus research, but it might serve a function for science:
By fighting established memes, it creates the temporary chaos that is needed
for optimal evolution.
Without this chaos, science will probably converge into a limited, powerful
meme complex, uncapable of further evolution.
I'm attracted to the idea of advanced hypertext systems, but we must be
aware of the dangers of memetic INvolution. If every innovative idea is
immediately ridiculized by established memes (using forward links), no new
meme will get the time to 'ripen' into something that can defend itself to
criticism.
Think about it. Can we discuss this further?
++Marc
"Nazism is is just a swastika's way of making new swastikas"

From: nv91-asa@black04.nada.kth.se (Anders Sandberg)
Newsgroups: alt.memetics
Subject: Re: Territoriality and Me!-Me!-Me!-metics { ;^/
Date: 29 Sep 1994 09:59:46 GMT
++Marc wrote:
>Is "Me!Me!" a meme? Isn't it more like an anti-meme, an individual attempt
>to escape the memes of established science?
I would say its a memetic defence. When a mind encounters a new meme, it
can choose to accept it or try to reject it. This is based on its internal
memetic state, and memes which make a mind reject other competing memes
will have a better chance of surviving. Thus many memes will try to enforce
this behavior, to keep competitors away and try to spread themselves.
>I will not defend bogus research, but it might serve a function for science:
>By fighting established memes, it creates the temporary chaos that is needed
>for optimal evolution.
>Without this chaos, science will probably converge into a limited, powerful
>meme complex, uncapable of further evolution.
Its a bit like genetic mutations. New, mutated scientific theories sometimes
prove to have a survival value, although most are non-viable and are
quickly killed. Note that there are rather steady populations of such
mutants in the memetic population (fringe science and pseudoscience), from
which new theories and ideas can emerge. Maybe pseudoscience should be
likened to a memetic recessive disease: not too unrealistic and inefficient
to die off, but in high doses (a homozygotic state) its non-viable.
--
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension!
nv91-asa@hemul.nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~nv91-asa/main.html